Opinie o ebooku The Riddle of the Night - Thomas W. Hanshew

Fragment ebooka The Riddle of the Night - Thomas W. Hanshew

Thomas W. Hanshew (1857 – 1914) was an American actor and
writer, born in Brooklyn, N. Y. He went on the stage when only 16
years old, playing minor parts with Ellen Terry's company.
Subsequently he played important roles with Clara Morris and
Adelaide Neilson. Later he was associated with a publishing house
in London, where he resided at the close of his life. He used,
among others, the pen name "Charlotte May Kingsley," and wrote more
than 150 novels. Hanshew's best-known creation was the consulting
detective Hamilton Cleek, known as "the man of the forty faces" for
his incredible skill at disguise. The central figure in dozens of
short stories that began to appear in 1910 and were subsequently
collected in a series of books, Cleek is based in Clarges Street,
London, where he is constantly consulted by Inspector Narkom of
Scotland Yard. Hamilton Cleek is laughably unrealistic, at least to
the modern reader, not only for his ability to impersonate anyone
but for his physical derring-do and his frequent melodramatic
encounters with Margot, "Queen of the Apaches", and her
partner-in-crime Merode.

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Chapter1 A
MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR

It was half-past eleven on the night of Wednesday, April 14th,
when the well-known red limousine of Mr. Maverick Narkom,
superintendent of Scotland Yard, came abruptly to the head of
Mulberry Lane, which, as you may possibly know, is a narrow road
skirting one of the loneliest and wildest portions of Wimbledon
Common.

Lennard, the chauffeur, put on the brake with such suddenness
that the car seemed actually to rise from the earth, performed a
sort of buzzing and snorting semicircle, and all but collided with
the rear wall of Wuthering Grange before coming to a halt in the
narrow road space which lay between that wall and the tree-fringed
edge of the great Common.

Under ordinary circumstances one might as soon have expected to
run foul of a specimen of the great auk rearing a family in St.
Paul's churchyard, as to find Mr. Narkom's limousine in the
neighbourhood of Mulberry Lane at any hour of the day or the night
throughout the whole cycle of the year.

For a reason which will be made clear in the course of events,
however, the superintendent had been persuaded to go considerably
out of his way before returning to town after mingling duty with
pleasure in taking part in the festivities attendant upon the
coming of age of his friend Sir Philip Clavering's son and heir,
and, incidentally, in seeing, too, that Petrie and Hammond, two of
his sergeants, kept a watchful eye upon the famous Clavering
service of gold plate which had been brought out of the bank vault
for the occasion.

All three were sitting serenely back among the cushions of the
limousine at the period when Lennard brought it to this abrupt and
startling halt, the result of which was to fairly jerk them out of
their seats and send them sprawling over one another in a
struggling heap.

There was a moment of something like absolute confusion, for
mist and darkness enveloped both the road and the Common, and none
of the three could see anything from the windows of the car which
might decide whether they had collided with some obstruction or
were hovering upon the brink of some dangerous and unexpected
pitfall.

Nor were their fears lessened by perceiving—through the glass
screen—that Lennard had started up from his seat, and, with a
hastily produced electric torch in one upraised hand, was leaning
forward and wildly endeavouring to discern something through the
all-enfolding mist. Mr. Narkom hastily unlatched the door and
leaned out.

"What is it? What's gone wrong?" he inquired in the sharp
staccato of excitement. "Anything amiss?"

"Lord, yessir! I heard a shot and a cry. A pistol shot …
and a police whistle … and a cry of murder, sir. Up the lane
ahead of us!" began Lennard, in a quaking voice; then he uttered a
cry of fright, for, of a sudden, the darkness was riven by the
screaming note of a police whistle—of two police whistles in fact:
shrilling appeal and answer far up the lonely lane.

Hard on this came a man's voice shouting: "Head him off there,
whoever you are! Don't let him get by you. Look sharp! He's making
for the railway arch!"

Instantly there struck out the swift-measured sound of heavily
shod feet racing at top speed up the mist-shrouded lane, and
rapidly increasing the distance between the unseen runner and the
standing limousine.

No need to tell either Narkom or his men that the man whose
steps they heard was a constable, for there is a distinctive note,
to ears that are trained, rung out by the heavy, cumbersome boots
which folly accords to the British policeman.

Catching the ring of that telltale note now, Narkom shouted out
at the top of his voice: "All right, Constable! Stick to him! Help
coming!"

Then with a word of command to Lennard he pulled in his head,
slammed the door, and the chauffeur, dropping back to his seat,
threw open the clutch and sent the limousine bounding up the lane
at a fifty-mile clip.

To-night, with the trees shadowing it and the mist crowding in,
shoulder high, from the adjacent Common, the lane was a mere dark
funnel; but to Lennard, whose boyhood had been passed within
hailing distance of the place, it possessed no mysteries that the
night or the vapour could hide.

He knew that it ran on for some seven or eight hundred feet,
with the high brick wall which marked the rear boundary of
Wuthering Grange on one side of it and straggling trees and matted
gorse bushes shutting it in on the other, until it dipped down a
steadily increasing incline, and ran straightway through an old
brick-walled, brick-roofed arch of a long-abandoned Wimbledon Loop
line.

Some two hundred feet upon the other side of this it divided
into a sort of "Y," one branch swerving to the left forming a right
of way across the meadows to the public highway, whilst the other
struck out over the Common to the right, crossed Beverly Brook, and
merged at length into the road which leads to Coombe Wood, and
thence, through picturesque ways, to Kingston and the river.

The limousine took those seven or eight hundred feet between the
head of the lane and the old railway arch at such a stupendous pace
that it seemed to have no more than started before the distance was
eaten up and it came to halt again; but this time, in such a din
and babel of struggling and shouting that Lennard seemed to have
reached the very gateway of Sheol.

Narkom and his men were out of the vehicle almost as the brake
fell into place, and clicking their electric pocket torches into
sudden flame, rushed headlong into the black opening of the arch,
into which they had taken but half a dozen steps, when they came
upon a startling sight.

Snarling and yapping like a couple of fighting dogs and crying
out in concert: "Got you, you blighter! Got you fast!" were two
men, locked tight in each other's arms, reeling and swaying—one
wearing the official badge of an appointed Common keeper, the other
in the helmet and tunic of an ordinary constable.

"Lend a hand, gov'ner, for Gawd's sake!" rapped out the former.
"Name's Mawson, sir—keeper on the Common— Number four, sir. Got the
blackguard! Murder, sir—got him red handed!"

"Good Lord!" little more than gulped the man he held.

The two pairs of gripping hands dropped, the struggling figures
fell apart, and the two men who but an instant before had been
locked in an angry embrace stood staring at each other in
open-mouthed amazement.

"What kind of a game is this?" demanded Narkom, as with his
allies he crowded forward. "You two people are paid to keep the
peace, not to break it, dash you!"

"My word!" exclaimed the Common keeper, finding his voice
suddenly. "A copper, is it?—a copper! when I thought… . Gawd's
truth, Constable, wot have you done with him? He run in here with
me on his blessed heels. You didn't let him get past you, did
you?"

"No fear!" snapped out the constable indignantly. "I stood here
waiting—waiting and shouting to you—until you ran smack into my
blessed arms; and if anybody but you come in your side of
the arch, he never come out o' mine, I'll take my solemn oath!"

"Then where's he gone? Wot's become of him?" shouted the Common
keeper excitedly. "I tell you I was on the very heels of him from
the moment I first whistled and called out to you to head him off.
I could a-most have touched him when he dashed in here; and—and his
footsteps never stopped soundin' for one second the whole blessed
time. Murder is wot he's done—murder!—and I've been on his heels
from the very moment he fired the shot."

Narkom and his allies lost not an instant in revealing their
identity and displaying their insignia of office to the two
men.

"Murder is it, Keeper?" exclaimed the superintendent,
remembering all at once what Lennard had said about hearing the cry
and the shot. "When and how? Lead me to the body."

"Lor' bless you, sir, I aren't 'ad no time nor chanct to look
after any body," replied the keeper. "All's I can tell you is that
I was out there in my shelter on the Common when I heard the first
cry—like as some one was callin' for help whiles some one else had
'em by the windpipe, sir; so I dashes out and cuts through the mist
and gorse as fast as my blessed legs could carry me. Jist as I gets
to the edge of the lane, sir, 'Bang!' goes a revolver shot jist
'arf a dozen feet in front of me, and a man, wot I couldn't see
'ide nor 'air of on account of the mist, nicks out o' somewheres,
and cuts off down the lane like a blessed race 'orse. I outs with
me whistle and blows it as 'ard as I could, and cuts off after him.
He never stopped runnin' for a blessed instant. He never doubled on
me, never turned to the right nor to the left, gov'ner, but jist
dashes into this arch—straight in front of me, sir, and me running
on almost within reachin' distance, until I runs smack into the
arms of this constable here, and grabs him, thinkin' I'd
got my man for sure. Wherever he's got to since, I tell you he come
in here, sir—smack in!—and me after him; and if he didn't
get past the constable——"

"He didn't— I've told you so once, and I'll stick to it!"
interrupted the constable himself, with some show of heat. "What do
you take me for—an old woman? Look here, Mr. Narkom, sir, my name's
Mellish. It's true I've only been on the force a little over a
week, sir, but my sergeant will tell you I've got my wits about me
and aren't in the least likely to let a man slip past me in the
manner that this chap thinks. Nothing went past me—nothing
the size of a cat, let alone a man, sir—and if the party in
question really did come in here——"

"I'll soon settle that question!" rapped in Narkom sharply.

He flung a hurried command to Lennard, waved Petrie and Hammond
aside, and an instant later the limousine moved swiftly up out of
the mist until its bulk filled the entrance of the arch and its
blazing acetylene lamps were sweeping it with light from end to
end. Smooth as a rifle bore, its damp walls and curving roof shone
out in the sudden glare—not a brick displaced, not a crevice big
enough to shelter a rat much less a human being—and of the man the
Common keeper had been chasing, not a sign nor a trace
anywhere!

"Whatever the fellow did or wherever he went, he can't have gone
far, so look sharp, my lads!" commanded Narkom. "If we're quick
we're sure to nab him. Come along, Constable, come along, Keeper.
Lennard, you stop where you are and guard the exit from the arch,
so if he doubles on us he can't get by you!"

"Right you are, sir!" responded Lennard, as the superintendent
and the four men made a dash toward that end of the arch through
which the keeper was so positive the fugitive had come.

"I say, Mr. Narkom!" he added, raising his voice and shouting
after them. "Eyes sharp to the left, all of you, when you get
outside this arch. Know the neighbourhood like a book, sir. Lane
forks out into a 'Y' after you get about fifty yards on. Branches
off on the left where there's an old house called Gleer Cottage,
sir, that hasn't been tenanted for years and years. Walled
garden—tool house—stable. Great place for man to hide, sir!"

"Good boy! Thanks!" flung back Narkom. "Come on, my lads!
Lively!"

Then they swung out of the arch with a rush, and the last that
Lennard saw of them before the shrouding mist took them and blotted
them from his view, they were pelting up the lane at top speed and
making headlong for the branching "Y" to which he had directed
them, their footsteps sounding on the moist surface of the road and
their electric torches emitting every now and again a spark like a
glowworm flashing.

Five minutes passed—the click of their flying steps had dropped
off into silence; the flash of their torches had vanished in the
distance and the mist; even the blurred sound of their excited
voices was stilled; and neither ear nor eye could now detect
anything but the soft drip of the moisture from the roof of the
arch and the white oblivion of the close-pressing, ever-thickening
mist.

Still he sat there, waiting—alert, watchful, keen—looking
straight before him and keeping a close watch on the unobstructed
end of the miniature tunnel whose entire length was still flooded
with the glare from the motor's lamps. If a mouse had crawled down
its damp walls he must have seen it; if even so much as a shadow
had come up out of that wilderness of mist and crept into the
place, he must have detected, it. But there was nothing; neither
man nor beast, neither shade nor shadow; only the loneliness and
the mist and the soft "plick-plick!" of the dropping moisture.

The five minutes became eight, ten, a dozen, without the
slightest change in anything. Then, all of a sudden, Lennard's
tense nerves gave a sort of jump and a swift prickle flashed up his
spine and through his hair. A sound had come—a rustle—a step—a
movement. Not from the direction in which he was looking, however,
but from the lane beyond the arch and behind the
limousine.

He jumped to his feet and rising on tiptoe on his driver's seat
flashed the light of his electric torch back over the top of the
vehicle; what he saw took all the breath out of him and set his
heart and pulses hammering furiously.

Against that thick blanket of mist the penetrating power of the
torch's gleam was so effectually blunted that it could do nothing
more than throw a pale, weak circle of light a few feet into the
depths of a crowding vapour, leaving all beyond and upon either
side doubly dark in contrast.

Yet as the light streamed out and flung that circle into the
impinging mist, there moved across it the figure of a woman, young
and fair, with a scarf of lace thrown over her head, from beneath
which fell a glory of unbound hair, thick and lustrous, over
shoulders that were wrapped in ermine—ermine in mid-April!

A woman! Here! At this hour! In this time of violence and evil
doing! The thing was so uncanny, so unnatural, so startlingly
unexpected, that Lennard's head swam.

She was gone so soon—just glimmering across the circle of light
and then vanishing into the mist as suddenly as she had
appeared—that for a moment or two he lost his nerve and his wits,
and ducked down under the screen of the motor's top, remembering
all the tales he had ever heard of ghosts and apparitions, and, in
a moment of folly, half believing he had looked upon one. But of a
sudden his better sense asserted itself, and realizing that for a
woman—any woman, no matter how dressed, no matter how
young and fair and good to look upon—to be moving stealthily about
this place, at this hour, when there was talk of murder, was at
least suspicious, he laid hands upon the wheel, and being unable to
turn the vehicle in the arch and go after her, put on full
power and went after Narkom and his men. A swift whizz carried him
through the arch and up the lane, and, once in the open, he laid
hand upon the bulb of the motor horn and sent blast after blast
hooting through the stillness, shouting at the top of his voice as
he scorched over the ground:

"Mr. Narkom! Mr. Narkom! This way, sir, this way! This way!"

Chapter2
HOW THE CHASE ENDED

Meanwhile Mr. Narkom and his zealous assistants had rushed
wildly on, coming forth at last from the old railway arch into the
narrow lane without so much as catching a glimpse or finding the
slightest trace of either victim or murderer.

But that they had not all been deceived by an hallucination of
the night, received proof from the triumphant discovery of Sergeant
Petrie, who, with the aid of his torch and the bull's-eye lantern
of Constable Mellish, had found the unmistakable traces of hurried
footsteps on the soft, yielding earth.

"Lummy, sir! the place is alive with 'em," ejaculated Mellish.
"This is the way he went, sir, down this 'ere lane, and makin' for
the right of way across the fields, like wot that shuvver of yours
said, sir."

Narkom, Hammond, and Petrie were at his side before he had
finished speaking. It was true, other footprints were there, all
the lonely tree-girt road was full of them, going down the centre
in one long, unbroken line. They stopped but a moment to make sure
of this, then rose and dashed on in the direction which they
led.

Straight on, down the middle of the thoroughfare, without break
or interruption, the foot-made trail drew them; under dripping
overshadowing trees; by natural hedges and unnatural mounds where
weeds and briars scrambled over piles of débris, and the light of
their torches showed Narkom and his men the dim irregular outlines
of a crumbling wall, green with moss and lichen and higher in parts
than a man's head.

On and still on, the deeply dug footprints lessening not a whit
in their clearness, until, all of a moment, they swerved slightly
to the left and then abruptly stopped—stopped dead short, and after
that were seen no more!

"Here's where he went!" called out Hammond, pointing to the left
as Narkom and the others, in a sort of panic, went running round
and endeavouring to pick up the lost trail. "Look, sir—grass here
and the wall beyond. Hopped over on to the grass, that's what he
did, then scaled the wall and 'went to earth' like an idiot in that
old house Lennard told us of. Come along—quick!

"Fair copped him, sir, as sure as eggs," he added excitedly,
plunging in through the mist and the shadow of the trees until he
came to the wall in question. "Break in the wall here, coping gone,
dry dust of newly crumbled mortar on the grass. Got over here, Mr.
Narkom—yes, and cut himself doing it. Hand, most likely; for there
are bits of mortar with broken glass stuck in 'em lying about and a
drop of fresh blood on the top of the wall!"

A single look was enough, when Mr. Narkom came hurrying to his
side, to verify all that had been said; and with an excited, "This
way, all of you. Look sharp!" the superintendent sprang up, gripped
the broken top of the wall, scrambled over it and dropped down into
the darkness and mist upon the other side. The others followed his
lead, and the next moment all were in the dark, walled-in enclosure
in the middle of which the long-abandoned house known as Gleer
Cottage stood. They could see nothing of it from where they were,
for the mist and the crowded screen of long-neglected fruit trees
shut it in as with a curtain.

"Better let me go ahead and light the way, gents," said
Constable Mellish in an excited whisper, as he again unshuttered
his bull's-eye and directed its gleam upon the matted and tangled
verdure. "Stout boots and thick trousers is what's wanted to tramp
a path through these briars; them evening clothes of yours 'ud be
torn to ribbons and your ankles cut to the bone before you'd gone a
dozen yards. Lummy! there's another of his footprints—on the edge
of that flower bed there! see! Come on, come on—quick!"

Too excited and too much occupied with the work in hand to care
who took the lead so that they got through the place and ran their
quarry to earth, Narkom and the rest suffered the suburban
constable to beat a way for them through the brambly wilderness,
while with bodies bent, nerves tense as wire, treading on tiptoe
along the trail that was being so cautiously blazed for them, they
pressed on after him.

Suddenly, without hint or warning, a faint metallic "click"
sounded, the light they were following went suddenly out, and
before Narkom, realizing that Mellish had sprung the shutter over
the flame of his lamp, could voice a whispered inquiry, the
constable's body lurched back against his own and a shaking hand
descended upon his shoulder.

"Don't move, don't speak, sir!" said Mellish's voice close to
his ear. "We've got him right enough. He's in the house itself, and
with a light! There's a board or something put up against the
window to shield it, but you can see the light through the
chinks—coming and going, sir, like as he was carrying it
about."

Startling as the statement was, when Narkom and the rest came on
tiptoe to the end of the trampled path and peeped around the last
screening bush into the open beyond, they found it to be the
case.

Blurred, shadowy, mist wrapped—like the ghost of a house set in
a ghostly garden—there stood the long-abandoned building, its blank
upper windows lost in the wrapping fog; its dreary face toward the
distant road; its bleak, unlovely side fronting the point from
which Narkom and his men now viewed it; and from one of the two
side windows thin wavering lines of constantly shifting light
issued from beneath the shadow of a veranda.

"Candlelight, sir, and a draught somewhere, nobody moving
about," whispered Hammond. "Window or a door open—that's what makes
the light rise and fall. What an ass! Barricaded the window and
never thought to stop up the chinks. Lord, for a fellow clever
enough to get away from the constable and the keeper in the manner
he did, you'd never look for an idiot's trick like this."

Narkom might have reminded him that it was an old, old failing
on the part of the criminal class, this overlooking some trifling
little point after a deed of almost diabolical cunning; but at
present he was too much excited to think of anything but getting
into that lighted room and nabbing his man before he slipped the
leash again and escaped him.

Ducking down he led a swift but soundless flight across the open
space until he and his allies were close up under the shadow of the
building itself, where he made the rather surprising discovery that
the rear door was unlocked. Through this they made their way down a
passage, at the end of which was evidently the room they sought,
for a tiny thread of light lay between the door and the bare boards
of the passage. Here they halted a moment, their nerves strung to
breaking point and their hearts hammering thickly as they now heard
a faint rustling movement and a noise of tearing paper sounding
from behind it.

For a moment these things alone were audible; then Narkom's hand
shot upward as a silent signal; there was a concerted movement, a
crash that carried a broken door inward and sent echoes bellowing
and bounding from landing to landing and wall to wall, a gush of
light, a scramble of crowding figures, a chorus of excited voices,
and—the men of Scotland Yard were in the room.

But no cornered criminal rose to do battle with them, and no
startled outcry greeted their coming—nothing but the squeal and
scamper of frightened rats bolting to safety behind the wainscot; a
mere ripple of sound, and after it a silence which even the
intruders had not breath enough to break with any spoken word.

With peeling walls and mouldering floor the long, low-ceiled
room gaped out before them, littered with fallen plaster and thick
with dust and cobwebs. On the floor, in the blank space between the
two boarded-up windows, a pair of lighted candles guttered and
flared, while behind them, with arms outstretched, sleeves spiked
to the wall—a human crucifix, with lolling head and bended knees—a
dead man hung, and the light shining upon his distorted face
revealed the hideous fact that he had been strangled to death.

However many his years, they could not have totalled more than
five and thirty at most, and ghastly as he was now, in life he must
have been strikingly handsome: fair of hair and moustache, lean of
loin and broad of shoulder, and with that subtle something
about him which mutely stands sponsor for the thing called
birth.

He was clad in a long gray topcoat of fine texture and
fashionable cut—a coat unbuttoned and flung open by the same
furious hand which had rent and torn at the suit of evening clothes
he wore beneath.

The waistcoat was wrenched apart and a snapped watch chain
dangled from it, and on the broad expanse of shirt bosom thus
exposed there was rudely smeared in thick black letters—as if a
finger had been dipped for the purpose in blacking or axle grease—a
string of mystifying numerals running thus:

2 x 4 x 1 x 2

For a moment the men who had stumbled upon this appalling sight
stood staring at it in horrified silence; then Constable Mellish
backed shudderingly away and voiced the first spoken word.

"The Lord deliver us!" he said in a quaking whisper.
"Not the murderer himself, but the party as he murdered! A
gent—a swell—strangled in a place like this! Gawd help us! what was
a man like that a-doing of here? And besides, the shot was fired
out there—on the Common—as you know yourselves. You heard it,
didn't you?"

Nobody answered him. For Narkom and his men this horrifying
discovery possessed more startling, more mystifying, more appalling
surprises than that which lay in the mere finding of the victim of
a tragedy where they had been confident of running to earth the
assassin alone. For in that ghastly dead thing spiked to the
crumbling wall they saw again a man who less than four hours ago
had stood before them in the full flower of health and strength and
life.

"Good God!" gasped Hammond, laying a shaking hand upon Narkom's
arm. "You see who it is, don't you, sir? It's the Austrian gent who
was at Clavering Close to-night— Count Whats-his-name!"

"De Louvisan—Count Franz de Louvisan," supplied Narkom
agitatedly. "The last man in the world who should have
shown himself in the home of the man whose sweetheart he was taking
away, despite the lady's own desires and entreaties! And to come to
such an end—to-night—in such a place as this—after such an
interview with the two people whose lives he was wrecking… . Good
God!"

A thought almost too horrible to put into words lay behind that
last excited exclamation, for his eyes had fallen on a thin catgut
halter—a violoncello string—thus snatched from its innocent
purpose, and through his mind had floated the strains of the music
with which Lady Katharine Fordham had amused the company but a
short time before. He turned abruptly to his men and had just
opened his mouth to issue a command when the darkness and silence
without were riven suddenly by the hooting of a motor horn and the
voice of Lennard shouting.

"Stop!" commanded Narkom, as the men made an excited step toward
the door. "Search this house—guard it—don't let any one enter or
leave it until I come back. If any living man comes near it, arrest
him, no matter who or what he is. But don't leave the place
unguarded for a single instant—remember that. There's only one man
in the world for this affair. Stop where you are until I return
with him."

Then he flung himself out of the room, out of the house, and ran
as fast as he could fly in the direction of the tooting horn. At
the point where the branching arm of the "Y" joined the main
portion of Mulberry Lane, he caught sight of two huge, glaring
motor lamps coming toward him through the mist and darkness. In a
twinkling the limousine had halted in front of him, and Lennard was
telling excitedly of that startling experience back there by the
old railway arch.

"A woman, sir—a young and beautiful woman! And she must have had
something to do with this night's business, gov'ner, or why should
she be wandering about this place at such a time? Hop in quick,
sir, and I'll run you back to the spot where I saw her."

At any other time, under any other circumstances, Narkom might,
probably would, have complied with that request; but now—— A woman
indeed! No woman's hand could have nailed that grim figure to the
wall of Gleer Cottage, at least not alone, not without assistance.
This he realized; and brushing the suggestion aside, jumped into
the limousine and slammed the door upon himself.

"Drive to Clarges Street! I must see Cleek! Full speed now!
Don't let the devil himself stop you!" he cried; and in a moment
they were bounding away townward at a fifty-mile clip that ate up
the distance like a cat lapping cream.